Walk into a room and listen for thirty seconds before you speak. You’ll never regret the thirty seconds.

Rooms have a temperature and a subject already running before you arrive. Speaking first means guessing at both, and a guess made out loud is hard to take back. A short stretch of listening tells you who is tense, what the real conversation is, and where your words would actually land.

Give yourself half a minute at the door of any room this week. Watch who defers to whom and what everyone is carefully not saying. Then say something that fits what you found, rather than what you prepared on the way over.